With developments in networks, a large number of people acquire information from the Internet. In this instance, information in the Internet is generally transmitted via a website which is displayed on a terminal screen.
As in offline information transmission media such as a newspaper and a television broadcast, even in the case of information transmission via a website, information may be displayed to a searcher to only certain extents. Also, all information may not be displayed in a single website. Although information that has been exposed in a website may be completely displayed in a single website, burdens on a system operating the website may be significantly increased. Also, a searcher who wants to search for previous information may suffer an inconvenience in such searching.
The Internet continuously updates past information so as to quickly disclose a large amount of current information. Accordingly, a searcher may desperately desire to know what kind of information had been displayed in a website. However, a service which can satisfy a searcher's such desire has not been developed.
A service which periodically visits a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) site and records hypertext markup language (HTML) associated with the URL site and thus, records a previous history about the particular URL site is being provided. However, in this case, as time passes, an original text file of the previous history record utilizing HTML may disappear. In this instance, since the previous history may not be properly embodied, the previous history may not have any value as information.
If a previous history record model of a website which can semi-permanently record information without regard to deletion or change of an original text file and accurately transmit the previous history of the website to a searcher utilizing the recorded information is provided, information may be stably recorded and maintained.
Accordingly, a new model of generating and searching website history information which can satisfy a searcher's search request about what kinds of content a website had embodied at a predetermined previous point in time, by continuously generating a small amount of image information via repeated capturing operations with respect to at least one website and maintaining the image information as a previous history of the website is needed.